Haverford College shows love for environment on Earth Day

HAVERFORD -- Haverford College junior Celia Ristow knows she has learned a lot in her almost three years at the school.

And one of the things one of the leaders of the school's Earthquakers Club does know now is that it doesn't take a lot of thought to decide if taking care of the environment is important or not.

"To me, it's a no-brainer on whether we should take care of the Earth anymore," she said in response to a question about whether global warming is a real or hype. "Looking at the data, the rise in CO2 (carbon dioxide) is almost identically in line with the change in climate. The data is compelling."

Ristow and some of her friends were part of Monday's Earth Day campaign at the college. The activities included college horticulturist Mike Startup leading the planting of cardinal flowers, wool grass, yellow cane flowers, Maryland golden aster and broadleaf ironweed adjacent to the duck pond and skate house on the campus.

Startup said it was the eighth year for the school to have a planting project in that area. Monday was the 43rd Earth Day.

"You can look and see from years past where they are starting to get some size to them," Startup said of the previous plantings.

As part of the Earth Day celebration, Startup sat in a rocking chair on the porch of Founders Hall and read the book, "The Lorax," which emphasizes the importance of taking care of trees and the environment.

Ristow noted that the Earthquakers Club thinks about taking care of the environment year round.

"It is student run and anyone can join," Ristow said. "Anyone can propose projects."

Some of those projects have included helping clean up Pennypack Creek in Philadelphia, working to change the dorm bathrooms from having paper towels to getting towel hooks, and also traveling to Washington, D.C., to protest the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that would transfer tar sand oil from Canada into the Midwestern states of the U.S. But with temperatures in the low 60s and sunny skies, the club mainly wanted fellow students to not spend all day inside.

"Today, we wanted people to get outside and enjoy the campus," said Ristow, who is a history major and environmental science minor. "We definitely believe we can make a difference."